Baker Has White House’s Number--Some Regret It

Eight thousand telephone calls, a dozen roses and hours of annoyance later, U.S. officials have learned a lesson practically anyone could have told them: Don’t give your telephone number out on nationwide television.

On Wednesday afternoon, a testy Secretary of State James A. Baker III said in congressional testimony that Israeli leaders “should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414” at the White House, and “when you’re serious about peace, call us.”

The remark made an irresistible sound-bite for that night’s television news programs. After that, the deluge.

People across the country and beyond, many probably unaware that the number Baker had given out is readily available from directory assistance, swamped the White House with thousands of calls.

“A fairly incredible volume,” spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said. “I never encountered this many calls before. Of course, we’ve never had--I don’t recall ever having a phone number plastered across all the network news and radio shows before either.

“Pretty wily character,” Fitzwater said of Baker. “He gives out our phone number.”

Indeed, the State Department reported no extraordinary volume of calls even after it had been drawn into the affair.

Baker, at the White House Thursday afternoon, grinned when asked why he gave out the White House number, not the State Department’s.

“I worked over here for four years and I had that one well in my mind,” he said, recalling his days as Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff.

But not long after, Baker sent the roses--red and long-stemmed--to the operators to apologize.

The roses spent the day in a vase in the office in the basement of the Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House, where the women who handle the switchboard were beginning to recover.

By then, the call volume at the White House had receded to normal, officials said. The night before, however, the operators there were not sure what had hit them.

Normally, members of the public calling the White House to offer an opinion are transferred to the “comment office,” which politely takes down what the caller has to say and groups it with other messages on the same issue. Later, the White House releases a count of the calls showing support for the President’s position while keeping the numbers on the other side of the ledger secret.

The comment office, however, is only open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Moreover, the switchboard, which during the day is staffed by a half-dozen operators, has only half as many people after hours.

The operators’ chief work is actually outgoing calls--locating people whom White House officials need to reach.

Nonetheless, the operators usually can cope with nearly any sort of incoming flow. Not Wednesday night.

” . . . Very soon, they were just saying, well, thanking people for calling in and that was about it,” Fitzwater said.

As the evening wore on and the calls continued, White House lines became so badly blocked that the operators had to put a “Thank you for calling the White House” tape on the line and simply stop answering, Fitzwater said.

That’s what reporters from an Argentine newspaper, La Nacion of Buenos Aires, discovered when they tried to call.

“At the first attempt,” the paper reported Thursday, “a voice answered but hung up almost immediately without confirming whether the telephone belonged to the White House.”

Later, calls “met with the coldness of a prerecorded tape,” saying the number was unavailable “for the time being.”

By Thursday morning, as the volume of calls began to tail off, the operators had discovered who had caused the flood and had hit on a means of retaliation.

When Yaacov Eilon, a reporter for Israel’s Army Radio morning program dialed the number and told the operator he was calling in response to Baker’s invitation, the operator was quick to respond.

“You have to call the State Department . . . That number is 647-4000,” she said.

“But he told us to dial this number,” Eilon argued.

“Right sir, you need to call the State Department, that number is 647-4000,” the operator repeated.

“You mean he made a mistake?”

“Yes, sir.”